It’s time to make tea ice cream

Good tea makes for great scoops.

Here in New York under the East Coast heat dome, it’s too sweaty to cook, or even to chew. Ice cream to the rescue. Today’s Leafhopper is a special unpaywalled edition dedicated to one of my favorite sweets: tea flavored ice cream.

In another life, I developed around 100 ice cream flavors for my former employer, Serious Eats. The brand’s current owners have sacrificed much of the site’s old content to the SEO blood gods, but you’ll still find most of my recipes there. Ice cream has always interested me as an amorphous blank canvas. A pie’s a pie, and while you can play around with crusts and fillings, the end result invariably tastes like what you expect pie to taste. Ice cream can be or taste like anything you want it to. There’s no better carrier for creativity in your desserts.

Time and time again, I found that tea was an especially good match for ice cream. Dairy mutes some tea flavors but heightens and elongates others. Ice creams are regularly flavored with steepings of ingredients like mint leaves. And tea’s brisk character brings a subtle structure and refreshment to classic ice cream formats.

Do I need an ice cream maker?

Technically, no. You can freeze ice cream base in a wide baking dish by retrieving the dish every 30 minutes and stirring the frozen edges into the liquid center. This is basically how you make granita, an Italian shaved ice usually made with fruit puree. Your ice cream base should be heavy on fat (2:1 cream to milk), sugar (3/4 cup or more per quart), and egg yolks (6 or more per quart) to minimize ice crystals, and you can expect it to be less airy than conventionally churned ice cream. But it works.

That said, if you’ve read this far, get an ice cream maker. The basic Cuisinart model with a removable freezer bucket is excellent, and if you regularly spend $10 to $13 on premium supermarket pints, it pays for itself after five or so uses.

A basic ice cream base

Most of my ice creams begin with the same basic ingredients. To make a quart of ice cream, I use:

• 2 cups of heavy cream

• 1 cup of whole milk

• 3/4 cup of sugar

Sometimes I use more sugar, sometimes less. I might use equal parts cream and milk for a lighter approach. If I want a richer, creamier ice cream, I’ll make a custard by adding 6 egg yolks. However these days I usually opt for an eggless base that’s easier to make and allows flavors to shine through more clearly. That’s what I’ll be using for the two recipes below.

When it comes to steeping tea leaves in ice cream, longer is usually better for a more flavorful infusion. You don’t have to worry about the tea turning bitter. Bring your dairy to a boil, then steep the leaves for a minimum of two hours. The ice cream will be even better if you transfer the dairy to the fridge and let the tea continue steeping overnight. You can also cold-steep your tea in chilled dairy for as long as a week—this is the method I use for infusing gyokuro, and it leads to a vivid umami-sweet scoop. Plus there’s something about the way the butterfat behaves when you don’t heat your ice cream base. It gets especially fluffy and rich in the churn.

The last critical component of your tea ice cream is salt. I add Diamond Crystal kosher salt in 1/4 teaspoon increments. If you’re using Morton’s kosher salt or table salt, you’ll want to go a little lighter, as those crystals are more dense and pack more salinity into each spoonful. The seasoned base should taste slightly stronger than you want the finished ice cream, as it’ll lose some intensity during freezing.

The best teas for steeping in ice cream

Most kinds of tea can be used for ice cream. Strong breakfast black teas like Assam or English Breakfast make a nice heady milk tea flavor. I use Assam CTC pellets for a masala chai recipe and broken leaf orthodox for anything else.

Roasted oolongs make excellent ice cream. Dairy picks up their brassy, buttery notes, inviting additions of nuts, toffee, caramel, or dark fruits like cherry. Head to your local Asian supermarket and look for packages of tieguanyin or shui xian. These affordable, heavily roasted teas are just the thing.

Matcha may be the most obvious answer, and for good reason. It’s an instant addition that requires no steeping time—just whisk it in. Powdered hojicha, a roasted green tea milled like matcha, is easier to find these days, and can be used the same way. However I also like looseleaf green tea ice creams, and I think they offer a more nuanced flavor than the bazooka blast of matcha. One of my favorite tea ice cream flavors is gyokuro. Assertive Chinese greens are on my hit list. So is genmaicha.

Don’t overlook white tea. A decent aged shou mei cake rewards you with a woodsy, spiced ice cream redolent of autumn. A good ripe puer hits the spot as well. Last but not least, scented and flavored teas like jasmine or Earl Grey are classic choices that translate well. The same is true for a smoky Russian Caravan.

Whatever tea you select, be prepared to use several tablespoons for a quart. This is what will distinguish your homemade ice cream from less tea-forward commercial versions.

Start with these ice cream recipes

If you’re ready to churn, here are some previously published recipes you can try.

• Ginger Matcha Ice Cream

• Masala Chai Ice Cream

• Thai Tea Ice Cream

• Milk Tea Sherbet

And here are two new recipes for Leafhopper readers, with a special focus on great tea.

Gyokuro green tea ice cream

Tea plants destined for gyokuro are handled similar to those used for matcha, which is what’s usually used to make green tea ice cream. Both are heavily fertilized during the growing season and shaded in the weeks leading to harvest, resulting in an intense green tea scoop that’s chock full of amino acids like l-theanine. These amino acids give the tea its characteristic umami and deep sweetness. While leaves for matcha are ground, gyokuro leaves are left whole. I think they make a more interesting ice cream with a distinctive edamame flavor. Gyokuro is an expensive choice for ice cream, but I think it’s worth the splurge. I used the Kanro from Ippodo for this recipe.

• 2 cups heavy cream

• 1 cup whole milk

• 3 tablespoons gyokuro green tea (about 20 grams)

• 3/4 cup sugar

• Kosher salt, to taste

Add cream, milk, and gyokuro to a lidded container and mix to combine. Steep in the refrigerator for several days, up to a week. The longer you infuse, the stronger the flavor will be.

Once infused, strain the tea leaves out of the dairy. Use a spoon to press on the leaves through a strainer to extract every last drop of green liquid. This is the most potent flavoring of the batch, so don’t skip it.

Stir in the sugar and mix very well to fully dissolve. Taste and add salt, starting in 1/4 teaspoon increments. Churn in your ice cream machine until the mix is very fluffy and has taken on a matte appearance. You’ll know the ice cream is done by pressing a spoon into the top. The spoon should leave a clear impression that doesn’t fill in. Quickly transfer ice cream to a lidded container and chill in the back of the freezer for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight.

Rocky tea horse road ice cream

Ripe puer’s earthy, mushroomy flavors translate deliciously to ice cream. All that butterfat heightens the tea’s fruity notes, yet there’s a distinct savory side that keeps me going back for another spoonful. In the past I’ve paired ripe puer with chocolate, and that combination works well, but for this ice cream I wanted something that contrasted the tea’s dark vibes while highlighting its inherent sweetness. That led me, in a roundabout way, to rocky road, and the way all those chunks make the base ice cream more exciting. Inclusions of candied ginger, dried date, and roasted almond pop against the moody puer. Seek out a tea with sweet notes. I’ve used White2tea’s En Passant, which yielded red date flavors when steeped in dairy.

• 2 cups heavy cream

• 1 cup whole milk

• 35 grams ripe puer (I used 5 single-serving 7-gram tea balls)

• 3/4 cup sugar

• Kosher salt, to taste

• 1/2 cup dried dates, pitted and chopped fine

• 1/2 cup candied ginger, chopped fine

• 1/2 cup roasted unsalted almonds, chopped fine and sifted to remove tiny chunks and skins

Heat cream and milk in a saucepan over medium-high heat, just until the dairy begins to boil. Stir in ripe puer, cover, and let steep for 2 hours. By then the mix should be cool enough to transfer to the refrigerator. Chill overnight for the best flavor.

The next day, strain the tea leaves out of the dairy. Use a spoon to press on the leaves through a strainer. Stir in the sugar and mix very well to fully dissolve. Taste and add salt, starting in 1/4 teaspoon increments.

Prepare your mix-ins before you start churning. Arrange the date pieces on a sheet pan or plate in a thin, even layer to chill in the freezer. Don’t let the pieces touch or they’ll stick together. Put the candied ginger and roasted almonds in a container and chill in the freezer as well.

Churn the chilled base in your ice cream machine until the mix is fluffy and has taken on a matte appearance. You’ll know the ice cream is done by pressing a spoon into the top. The spoon should leave a clear impression that doesn’t fill in. With the machine running, slowly shake in the dates, ginger, and almonds to distribute them throughout the ice cream. Quickly transfer to a lidded container and chill in the back of the freezer for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight.

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